


Cigs Cost More Than Cancer

by PinkAfroPuffs



Series: Fate/Beautiful Forest Hobo [4]
Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Cigarettes, F/M, Mentions of Billy and Geronimo but it was before i actually got either of them, Mutual Pining, Poker Nights, we stan a considerate king!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 03:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20037319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkAfroPuffs/pseuds/PinkAfroPuffs
Summary: Maybe Caster's just a little wiser than the other Cu's. Or maybe it's that he's just as chaotic.





	Cigs Cost More Than Cancer

**Author's Note:**

> I love a lot of Servants, actually. I promise.

“You’re smoking again?”

Master seems disappointed. She isn’t quite pouting, but it’s damn close, so Robin takes the cigarette out of his mouth. “Need something, Master?”

Now she _ does _ pout. Every single time he says ‘Master’, she does this. He promised himself not to spoil her any and hasn’t decided to stop yet. “It’s just...smoking is bad for you. That’s all.”

He knows this, via the grail. Still, he’s been dead a long time, so he doubts he’d “die” because of a little nicotine. “Aw, c’mon, Master. Everyone deserves _ one _ bad habit.”

A complex expression flickers across her face. He’s got her there. 

“Besides,” he says with a little wave as he walks down the hall past her- he has a poker game to attend, after all, “if it bothers you that much, you should just cut your losses and send me back to the grail.” Saying this sort of thing to her is almost habitual at this point, and he won’t be stopping any time soon.

“Maybe I will!” She shouts, a little indignant, but he knows she won’t, and it comforts and confuses him at once.

“Sure, sure,” he shrugs, and disappears in Billy the Kid’s room.

* * *

“You just smoke wherever you want, don’t ya?”

Caster Cu is one of the easier Servants to hang around; other than sharing Robin’s horrible addiction to nicotine, he also indulges in some of the things that other Servants don’t- like sleeping and drinking six cups of coffee a day. It’s after the first four poker games have ended and most of the Servants who’d been playing dispersed that he and Caster take a smoke break in one of the better vented rooms in Chaldea. 

Robin sort of raises his eyebrows at Caster. “What’s wrong with that?”

Caster sort of shrugs. “Mostly nothin’, but some people don’t like the smell.”

He goes halfway on that one, inclining his head with a bit of a nod. “Everyone has something they don’t like, right? But it’s not really hurting anybody much.” 

The devious smile that flashes across Caster’s face alarms him only a little; with a little _ hmph _, he says, “Not any Servants, sure, but Master’s still alive. Be pretty awful if she got cancer or something ‘coz you couldn’t smoke in one place at a time, Archer.” Then he takes a drag that’s longer than many of the others he’s taken, as though to punctuate the point. 

Robin Hood isn’t a fool in the sort of way that would cause him to overreact to such information and allow Caster to get a kick out of it; carefully, he blows some smoke out of his nose, hoping he doesn’t seem affected by it. “Really.” He imagines their Master wrinkling her nose at him when he smokes, and then wonders if she knew this but decidedly hung around him anyway, for whatever reason. 

_ ‘It’s bad for your health. _’

He frowns a little bit, closes his eyes and scratches his head, and then turns toward the garbage can and snuffs out his smoke. “I’m done,” he informs him with a wave. 

“Hah?” Caster asks, disbelieving. “Already?” They’d only been out there for a couple of minutes, after all. Billy the Kid was probably still scrounging up snacks- or “borrowing” more items to gamble with. 

“Yeah,” he sighs, though more to himself than to Caster. “We still playing?”

“Hell yeah,” Caster grouses. “You still owe me from the last game.”

Robin Hood gives him a little grin and shakes his head. He enjoys poker because nothing about the game is fair, and underhanded methods are his specialty. “Sure, sure. We’ll see.”

* * *

It’s around naptime when she comes out to find him- he sort of wishes she would stop doing that, as she is his Master and he should seek _ her _ out instead- and she’s equipped with her normal pack and a couple of books, probably for studying. She’s been doing a lot of that lately; her studying the bits of magecraft she can do as a normal person must have become a hobby by now, because she comes to sit under the tree he’s in when they’re out camping like this often. 

“Hm.” He grins a little as he watches her set up, arms crossed from where he’s sitting in the tree. “You know, Master, if you keep coming out here like this, I’m going to start thinking you like me.”

She grins back at him and then tilts her head in his direction as though she thinks something he said was funny, and while he admits he _ is _ hilarious, he’s not sure what. “Oh, what a shame,” she replies, then plops down underneath his tree. 

After a few minutes- and before she can properly get comfortable- he finds himself saying, “You know, if you want to sit near me that badly, you can come up.”

“Can’t climb trees,” she says, her eyes on her book. “Didn’t learn.”

He clicks his tongue a couple of times in a faux shaming manner; leaning over the branch, he looks down at her then, his hood almost flopping on top of his head as he does. “You don’t camp, you don’t climb trees... What next? Are you going to tell me you’ve never slept under the stars before?”

She looks up at him, then, pouting. “I haven’t. I lived in the city, and I didn’t really…I mean there’s light pollution.”

Light pollution does tend to be a problem in these modern times, despite the rapid spurts of growth and new technology in medicine. Though he was only teasing before, he feels a little sorry for her now that he knows this, and decidedly slips down from where he’s been napping. “I’ll come down.”

“Ew, no, you probably smell like-” She laughs, but stops when he reaches her, then presses her nose to his cloak, as though she’s searching for something. 

“Like what?” He asks dumbly. “We all smell like dirt, Master. We’re human, after all.”

Her shoulders relax as she tilts her head at him again. He’s beginning to wonder what she sees when she looks at him like this, her eyes crinkling ever-so at their corners as she smiles and shakes her head. “...nothing.” Then she shrugs up against him, so close he almost jolts out of his skin. 

It’s not as though he hasn’t felt this kind of closeness before; she does it often, after all, but usually it’s less brazen than this, and she settles on being shoulder to shoulder with him. Now, his bare skin touches hers, and the right arm of his cloak is settled over her shoulder, her thick, curly hair- which he knows now smells of coconuts and tropical fruits- tickling just slightly at his neck, her back against his chest. It’s a little exciting. When he was alive, he wasn’t unfamiliar with skin-to-skin contact, but it wasn’t like _ this _. There’s something muted and stable about it that makes him almost want to run; somewhat vulnerable and eerily peaceful at once, he can’t help but feel he doesn’t want to jostle about when she’s here, especially while reading. To think, something as simple as cigarettes could have robbed him of this!

“Is it comfortable?” She asks. “I can move-”

“Don’t.” He answers, closing his eyes. “I’m going to sleep.”

She hums a little bit to herself, shifting closer to him still. A little smile pulls at one corner of his mouth and he obliges in the same manner before he really does drift off to sleep. Rats. Now this’ll be his favorite napping spot. 


End file.
